In the late nineteenth century, Dutch Old Master paintings became a sensation among wealthy collectors, with industrialists such as Henry Clay Frick and J. P. Morgan purchasing European paintings and sculptures to be shipped back to their mansions in America, which would eventually become the most important public museums of the United States, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and The Frick Collection.

Annette Stott, Professor of Art History, School of Art and Art History, University of Denver

Cécile Tainturier, Curator, Fondation Custodia (moderator)

Taking into consideration histories of taste, collecting, and the art market, this dialogue brings together Chris Stolwijk, a specialist on nineteenth-century Dutch painting, and Annette Stott, expert on American artists in the Netherlands in the late nineteenth century and author of Holland Mania (1998). These scholars discuss the late nineteenth-century moment of internationalism in the art world, offering contrasts and parallels in the transit of art, artists, and ideas in both directions across the Atlantic and the market and taste for nineteenth-century Dutch painting in the United States.

“‘Holland Mania’: American Taste, Collecting, and Travel in the Gilded Age” is the third event in the conference series “Holland-America: A Transatlantic Dialogue, from 1609 to Today,” organized and hosted by the Terra Foundation Paris Center & Library in spring 2016.